Central Air - This Podcast Is Going to the Dogs

Episode Date: April 22, 2026

On this week's show: We joined in the discourse about whether dog owners have gotten too big for their britches. (Dogs are sycophants, I say — at least cats have self-respect.) We discussed the wisdom of New York’s proposed tax on fancy pied-à-terre apartments. Axios reporter Alex Thompson, who caused a bit of consternation at last year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, joined us to talk about whether there should even be a White House Correspondents’ Dinner. And we even discussed a controversy that’s literally about air conditioning.Sign up for updates from Central Air at www.centralairpodcast.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.centralairpodcast.com/subscribe

Welcome to Central Air, the show where the temperature is always just right. This is Josh Barrow. I'm here with Ben Dreyfus, who writes the Substack newsletter, Calm Down, and Megan McCartle, columnist for the Washington Post. Hello, Ben. Hello, Megan. Hello. Hi, Josh. Have any of you tried to buy jam lately? I was at Whole Foods this week, $8 now for a jar of Bun Mamal brand jam. I looked it up. It was 6.50 a year ago.

This is, you know, Trump's America. Was this Iranian jam? No, it's French. So it's, you know, EU tariffs, I guess, on it. Chocolate's also gotten way more expensive. And I looked that up and that is not Trump's fault. There's like a global problem with the cocoa crop. And there were tariffs on cocoa, but we got rid of them. But cocoa is still fundamentally very expensive. So like the Girideli chocolate bars I buy to make brownies that used to be like three bucks 50 or now six dollars a piece. I put like $13 and 70 cents worth of chocolate products now in one batch of brownies. Life is getting incredibly. increasingly unaffordable. You are experiencing life as it was for people in the good old days when these things were a much more meaningful share of income. Yeah. And chocolate cakes used a lot less chocolate. Yeah. I mean, that's the, so I love the, the America's Test Kitchen Chewy brownies recipe. And you put three kinds of chocolate in it. There's, you get high quality Dutch processed cocoa powder and unsweetened chocolate that you melt and like mix into the batter. And then you put these chunks of the Giradelli chocolate. And it is drastically better than a box mix. But I sort of hadn't realized how much it was costing to make this, and especially now with the price of chocolate up. Whereas, like, you can buy a box of brownie mix for, like, $3. And Giradelli Mix is actually okay. Use butter, not oil.

I really don't like mixes in general. I am objectively anti-cake mix, for example. I've never met a cake mix I liked. I hate that, like, that, like, fake vanilla flavor, there's something about it that makes me crazy. And I really, really hate cakes with oil in them. But the Giridalea brownie mix, actually, you make it with butter actually pretty tasty. I have definitely kept a box of those on hands for dessert emergencies. In the olden times, when chocolate was as expensive as you were describing, this is what forced innovators like Willy Wonka to kidnap the umpahs and create a sort of slavery system because it just didn't make sense.

You just couldn't pay a decent wage and pay for the chocolate. I don't think the labor component, Ben, was the main problem there. But I will say if you've been following what's happening with Hershey's and Rees. I have not. What's happening with Hershey's and Rees? First of all, there's a couple things going on. Number one, Rees has been doing more and more brand expansions in recent years. You've probably noticed this in the grocery store where you have, like, big cups and Reese's Thins,

and you can get them with marshmallow or with jelly and peanut butter. They do all these shapes. And the shapes are often not filled with the same stuff that's in a Reese's peanut butter cup. Exactly. And apparently, in recent years, as a money-saving slash, I don't know, making it easier to mold option, they've been making some of these shapes with peanut butter cream and with some sort of reformulated chocolate that has more, I don't know, wax or something. Yeah. Anyway, so the grandson, or the great-grandson, some descendant of the original Reese's guy tweeted about this. Or he went on social media. I don't remember exactly what site, but he complained on social media about the decline. And he's like, I eat or Reese's every day.

And this is just making me sad. And so they've actually had to announce that they're reformulating some of their stuff to put higher cocoa solid percentages in the chocolate and reformulate away from the peanut butter cream. This is like when Domino's whole marketing thing was, we've decided to make good pizza now. Yeah, we're sorry. You know what? Okay. We're going to do it good. You mentioned the Giradelli box mix is the one good brownie mix.

And I was looking at that and I was thinking I needed to buy a box of it for research purposes because I'm confused about what could possibly be in the box because it has chocolate chunks too. And if it has the Giradelli 60% bittersweet chocolate chocolate, it can't have three-eighths of a pound of them like I put in a batch because that would have to fundamentally cost like $9. I do not know what magic these people have done. But I will say that I'm not sure you still can, but the best value has historically been to buy it at Costco. Because the Costco one comes with six bags of brownie mix. And then they have different kinds of recipes where there's like a cakey brownie and another kind of brownie that you can do from this same giant box. I do like vegetable oil and brownies, by the way. I like the fudgy texture that you get from that.

If I want a cake, I'll eat a cake. The brownie is like, you know, I wouldn't make a cake with vows. vegetable oil, but a brownie's a different item. It's supposed to have that texture. But why would you want to consume disgusting vegetable oil? It's so fudgy and chewy. It's delicious. There's a little bit of butter. So is butter? What's, what's wrong with butter? No, but then it's cake-like. You know, I like a cake, but sometimes I want something different in my life. If you want something with a little less water, if that's what you're worried about,

then take a tablespoon of water out when you use butter. It's because it's unsaturated fat. You get the different texture. The saturated fat is what gives you that... But it tastes like vegetable oil. No, it tastes like chocolate and chocolate and chocolate and a little bit of coffee to up the chocolate flavor. Chocolate-flavored vegetable oil. I don't know. It just tastes like a brownie to me.

I don't know a lot about baking like you guys do, but I will tell you that when it comes to chocolate in this house, the thing that we like is chocolate ice cream. And there's one place that does it best, and it's called Tillamook. Do you know about Tillamook? Uh-huh. Oh, yeah, from Oregon. do. Tillamook is also, for some reason, it used to cost so much money that you just couldn't do it.

You know, might as well just, might as well get a heroin addiction or something. But like, now Tillamook lately, I got, I got a Tillamook chocolate. How much ice cream are you eating a day, Ben? $5. This whole thing. I was like, my God, I don't know. But Tillamook also has, it's a fun word to say. And they're quite famous for their cheeses.

But if you haven't tried the Tillamook ice cream, I have. It's good. It's fantastic. It's like not as good as Hagen does, but it's like it's a good value. They also, somebody told me that Tillamook has a Willy Wonka style factory that you can go on a tour of if you go to Washington or Oregon or whatever. With slave labor? Yeah. So I'm seriously considering going to the Tillamook factory just to be like, where are the gobstoppers?

What are we going to get? Oh my God. What if they trap Ben and he ends up enslaved in a chocolate factory? That'll be pretty funny. There are worse fates, really. So coming up on this week's show, we're going to have Alex Thompson a little bit. He's national political correspondent for Axios, and we're going to talk with him about the upcoming White House Correspondence Dinner and whether there even should be a White House correspondent's dinner. We're also going to talk about the Pietater Tax proposal that is taking New York City by storm.

But I actually want to start this week by talking about dogs. Matt Iglesias has this viral piece on his substack titled Dogs Aren't People. and that is in return response to another viral piece. People have been talking about dogs all over Twitter this week. This one from New York Magazine about dog owners who take their dogs everywhere in violation of the rules that exclude dogs from various places. And in so they exploit norms of politeness and conflict aversion because people don't feel like arguing with dog owners, but whether their dog is supposed to be in the playground, in the restaurant, on the lap, on an airplane, etc., etc. And Matt sees this as in part of failure to enforce a correct hierarchy, which is to say societies for humans,

pets are our companions. We love our pets, but they are not stakeholders in our society in the way that our child is. And there's been a little bit of confusion that has emerged around that, particularly in cities where a lot of people believe that their fur babies are, you know, quite literally their fur babies and have been engaging in some inappropriate behavior. And I, you know, I feel like there's been a vibe shift on this because the reaction online has mostly been on my side of this issue, which is, you know, keep your dog in dog places, do not bring your dog to the restaurant. If your dog is on an airplane, your dog should be in a carrier.

Do not pretend that your dog is a service animal when it is obviously not a service animal. And I think finally the tide is turning in my direction on this issue and I am pleased. Look, I think that Matt is a little overly censorious in the sense that, look, there's actually no reason not to allow dogs and restaurants. Many European countries do. and Americans react as if I suggested that we should just like rub feces all over the kitchen. But in fact, what matters for having a dog in a restaurant is don't have a dog in a kitchen where they are preparing the food. It does not actually seem to be a significant health risk to have one in the serving area. That was an American choice that's a little paranoid, which is not to say that I think every restaurant should allow dogs,

but I think it probably wouldn't matter much if some did. And similarly, I think it's fine if dogs are in bars that aren't serving food, I go to a brewery where they don't serve food and there are dogs everywhere. And the people who go there like being around dogs or they can go somewhere else. There are many fine establishments that do not allow dogs. And part of this is I think it gets unhelpfully polarized into the people who just think dogs should be nowhere. I got into a fight on Twitter with a guy who was like, why can't you just train your dog to go between parked cars? And I was like, would you put a toddler between parked cars to use the bathroom? No, because that's really dangerous.

And that's why people don't do it. But at the same time, people complain about, like, people allowing their dogs to run up to their small children and then saying, oh, he's friendly. No, no, that's not an appropriate thing for a dog person. You are in charge of making sure that the humans are not frightened of your dog, not the other way around. It's not the human's job to adjust to their fear of your dog within reason. There are a lot of dog owners who fail at this. Right, but then there are also people who are like... And who have deeply incorrect impressions of how friendly there are a dog appears to the outside world.

I absolutely agree with this, but then there will also be people who are like, well, dogs shouldn't be allowed in cities because what if I'm afraid of dogs are allergic to them? And it's like, okay, you are living... Like, you know, you do not actually have the right to control everyone else's behavior in a 10-mile radius around you. like the universe a city is not going to be designed to make you maximally comfortable nor anyone else. We all got to like figure this one out together. And Matt says, you know, why are dog parks allowed in public spaces? Well, in fact, they're usually, our dog park, at least, is maintained by donations. It's actually not provided on public funds. It was built by a developer. And it's maintained by people who use it. And that seems perfectly reasonable to me. But it also

seems perfectly reasonable in the way that we have pickleball courts or other things that most people don't use, that it's fine to have amenities for humans, not for the dogs, that make the humans happy. And a dog park is an amenity like that. And I just don't understand why we have to be so polarized about this. I think that's like one of the problems that you have in regard to the backlash against dogs as a dog owner who doesn't want to see the dogs killed. You know, I don't want these dogs thrown into the river. I don't think anyone is proposing a dog haul. Holocaust. Oh, Will. Oh, you say it now. Just wait until the Overton window gets pushed. Well, and wait until we bring up pit bulls where there are, in fact, a lot of people who are proposing a pit bull holocaust.

Right. Well, but I think that one of the problems is that the pro dog, the pro dog people did have, they went too far, right? They lost a lot of the goodwill with this nonsense about emotional support dogs. And, you know, they pushed it so far that the airline stopped even agreeing with that. Like Josh, what you said about how, you know, dogs could be on airplanes, but they should be in carriers, unless you're literally blind. You know, and it's an actual, that's a common sense for all. That was violated. And we can all tell, by the way, like a real service dog is the best behaved dog you've ever seen. And they're at work and they behave like they're at work. Everyone knows looking at a dog when it's a real service dog and when it's, you know, somebody's poodle that they bought a service dog vest for for $20 on Amazon and put it on. Like, no. you're not fooling anyone. Right. And like it's just absolutely true. I think that once this became such people, it became so ignored. You know, even when I got my dog, I had to fly it from New York to Idaho.

And Delta said on the website, you know, it's going to cost you $200 to do that. But then immediately you get hit with an ad because you Googled it. And it says, don't spend $200 just by an emotional support thing. And it'll be free. And then eventually all these airlines know it's structurally built in where they caught on to it and stop letting you do it. And I just think that that happened in a lot of places where we went from zero to 60 with finding dogs not just in breweries outside and not just at like patios at restaurants, but suddenly you'd go into any bar and there would just be random dogs running out

inside. And I do think that that's sort of what created this weird backlash. Well, but you say like the dog people, most dog people are not psychos and do not do stuff like this. Right. It is a small number of, It's a small minority of people who just decided the rules don't apply to them. And those are bad people behaving badly. Yes. It's not dog owners. No, that's fair. The weird thing, though, to me, is the shamelessness of it.

Because, like, you know, what is the main reason that people who aren't handicapped don't park in handicapped parking spots? It's not mostly that they're afraid of getting parking tickets. It's that they understand that it's morally wrong. And they also understand that it would be socially sanctioned if people saw them doing it. That they know that, you know that, you know. other people would disapprove and they would be scolded for it. There's a social norm and the norm is holding and it's being enforced and people are obeying it. Somehow that doesn't apply to faking a disability for these other purposes, even though it actually puts strain on a system that is

important for people who have real disabilities that require real service animals. There's this completely weird lack of shame around exploiting the system that is supposed to be for people who have challenges that these people don't have. And I think part of why that has become possible is that people have decided that their dog ownership is itself a marker of moral worth that is to be rewarded. Like, people correctly understand cats as a matter of personal taste. Some people like cats. Some people don't like cats. That's fine. We can all have our opinions about cats. Whereas a lot of dog owners have decided that, like, the way that you show you are a good person is by having and loving dogs and feeling positively about dogs. And they therefore think that their dog is an amenity that when they bring it out into the world, it's that everyone gets to interact with their dog.

And they're, in fact, engaging in pro-social behavior. And therefore, it's fine to lie and say it's a service animal because really anyone with a dog like this should be allowed to bring the dog everywhere. Because everyone loves the dog and everyone wants the dog and everyone's happy to see the dog. And really, they should be thanked for bringing their dog on the plane. I don't think that's true, Josh. It's absolutely true. I have two large dogs. I spend a lot of time around people who have dogs.

And in fact, many people who come to our house view our dogs as an amenity and are like, look straight past us. are like, where are the dogs? But I don't think that's actually what's going on. What I think is going on is that the ADA, because it's in some ways poorly drafted and the enforcement mechanisms are not good, has enabled cheating on a wide range of things. It's not just about the dogs.

Because first of all, there are emotional support everything. If you look at what landlords are complaining about, the emotional support parrots and the emotional support snakes and everything else. It's not just dogs, all violating leases by basically claiming this workaround. But then, more broadly, right, we've seen this at schools. We've seen this in offices. People who are, like, faking.

I don't know. Do they know that they've gotten a kind of spurious diagnosis in order to get themselves extra time on tests? I don't know. Very often, yes. In many cases, do the people who are faking religious exemptions to get out of the Stanford Diding Plan? and have now been polaxed by the Stanford cafeteria adding a Jane option on the menu. Yeah, for those who hadn't seen this, Jainism is this South Asian religion that has a particularly strict version of veganism that you have to follow.

But it's like not even good enough to just eat vegetables. And it's very difficult to like to serve people who are on Jain diets. And so people at Stanford were getting out of the mandatory meal plan by falsely complaining to be Jain. and enough of them did this that Stanford decided, okay, fine, we're going to have Jane food. And the nice thing is, there were a few Jane students who have benefited from this. Yeah, who are better off now. But anyway, like, I actually don't think that it's because they think they're specially entitled because they're dog owners. I think that they're doing it because, look, when you love something and people do love their dogs,

I remember a woman in my building who had these two beautiful Great Pyrenees, and one of them died, and I was, was commiserating with her. And she said, you know, my daughter died five years ago. It meant nothing to me. No, no. She said it's the same pain. It doesn't last the same way when your dog died. Because my dog, it also just died when I saw her. And she said it doesn't last the same way. But when it hits, it's the same. People really do love their dogs. And when you love your dog, first of all, you want to be around it. Second of all, you don't want to leave it home. It'll get bored, whatever. And so people are just justifying something that they want to do.

out of affection for the dog, which is the affection itself is very legitimate, they don't think they're morally superior. They think they want to do something and they've found a way to cheat and do the thing they want. I will say that I think that there's something to do what Josh is saying

only because I somewhat feel it. You know, I, I, I, I don't, I don't have a problem with people who don't have pets. That's a lifestyle thing. Anyone can have, you know, their own things. But I genuinely do think that people

who own cats are bad people. Like, for the same simple reason that dogs have spent millions of years evolving to be our friends. You know, they recognized where their bread was buttered. And so they learned that their survival technique was to make these bonds with us. Us, humans are king. Humans number one. And these other animals, they didn't do that. Cats don't give a shit about us.

And when people own these other animals, you know, dogs are the only thing in the world. Like, if humans lost all the chips at the table, we went. bankrupt, lost the cards. And it was a post-apocalyptic situation where we're just wandering around with nothing to offer animals. Dogs are the only thing that would still stick with us because of the emotional bonds that they have and where they get endorphins and everything. And the other ones, cats will kill us, eat our bodies. Dogs will choose humans over other dogs. They're species betrayers when it comes to humans. And so I do think we owe the dogs a spot on the rocket ship to Mars when when Earth is exploding in a way that we don't owe the cats.

The cats and the horses don't deserve it those things. But this is my problem with dogs. Dogs are sick of fans. It's easy mode. It's like people want something that will, you know, they're afraid that they won't retain. Not all dog owners, but there's a class of dog owner that just needs the unconditional love because they are afraid that they will not be able to get a human to maintain love for them. I think you have backwards, at least for me, the appeal of dog of having a dog. It isn't that they love you.

It's that you love them. And that's actually a different thing, right? Like, yes, my, I don't know, sycophantic is the right word. My dog likes to wake me up at six in the morning. It's like, get out of bed, bitch. Like, it's time for someone's got to eat. Like, you're on the clock. But you love them.

And to love something is one of life's great experiences. Is it a substitute for love? loving a human, no, it's an add-on. I, you know, it's funny. I'm very allergic to cats, so I sometimes I wonder maybe I would be a cat person if that was available. I think I still wouldn't want a box full of shit in my house. But I sort of find the aloofness of cats more appealing.

It's like you have to, you have to work at it with a cat. And I kind of, I can respect a cat more than I can respect a dog. I mean, you have to work at it, but you won't ever get anywhere. They've done, like, MRI scans of the cats. The cats don't care about you. They just don't. My mom, as I think I've mentioned on this podcast, I'm in Idaho and I'm staying with her. And my mom used to be a dog rescuer, pit bull rescuer.

And then in her 70s, she became a rover person who like accepts dog boarding, you know, and walking and stuff like that. And then she fell last month and broke her hip and was in the hospital. And the first thing that we did that day was I called all the rover people and said, come get your fucking dogs. Like, I'm not a dog sitter and I have no interest in this. And I said, you know, my mom has a dog and I have a dog. So I was like, there's two dogs that I will adjust my lifestyle to care for for this situation. But these other seven ones get out. I don't want your money.

And then this whole thing went around the dog community in Sun Valley where people were calling going, why can't Jeremy's son just take care of these dogs? Then these other people in my mom's life were like, because he's not a dog sitter, he doesn't want, He's not a dog activist. But don't you love dogs? Aren't you a good person? We're right. The fact that they worded it like it should have just been something that I did out of.

It speaks to, I think, what you were saying, Josh. We're like, there's these people who think, of course you should just do this. But then to Megan's point, those people are not normal dog owners. Those people are cranks. You know, they're an extremist group. And as I say this, my mom was a dog rescueer for a long time. And when COVID happened, I wanted a dog. And I wanted a specific type of dog.

I wanted a Pomsky, which was invented in science lab. What is a Pomsky? That's a Pomeranian and a what? A husky. It was invented because of a BuzzFeed article in 2014 where they said, wouldn't this be cute? And then breeders said, well, we could make those. And it started making them. How does a Pomeranian have sex with a husky?

Well, no, they don't really have sex because that would be a death thing. So they do artificial intimidation. Okay. So these dogs are quite expensive and, you know, they're brand new and they don't look like something God created. They look like something that was invented by science. And so in 2020, I bought one for quite a lot of money. But I also couldn't tell my mom that I had done this because my mom would think I was a Nazi. You know, like that, she is one of those people.

And so I just lied and said, yeah, I rescued it. I rescued it. And she said, where? And I said, you know, like a shelter, I guess. I had to tell the lie to everybody because I didn't want it to get back to her. And everyone, when I said this, would look at me like they were 90% sure I was full of shit

because there was just no reason why this dog would ever be given up. You know, it was a 10-week-old designer dog. It took about three or four years before I finally said to my mom, like, all right, I'll be honest with you. Hadley Monsanto Dreyfus was person. She was in her name by science. I was like, her middle name should be Monsanto. Was that your mom's clue that Monsanto was not a rescue?

Well, then I told her and I was like, so I'll be honest. I bought it for $4,000 from some Amish breeders or whatever and had an Uber drive it from Ohio to fucking Brooklyn Heights. And then she said, Ben, I always suspected that. but boy, isn't it a great dog? And when like push came to shove, she did say, you know, this is a wonderful dog and I still love it so much that it's not like she gave it as scarlet letter. And it's just, it's a funny thing about the communities where like I had to lie to her before she met and fell in love with the dog. But then once that happened, she said, oh, of course, you know, sometimes, yeah, I guess you shouldn't rescue a pit bull, might eat a baby. Maybe you should get this beautiful type of bespoke dog.

And I just do think that you're right about the more. moral imbueing that people do with this. It is unhelpful, I think, in ways. I actually have four additional hot takes on my list of notes, but I think that might be enough dog time for this week's episode. But I encourage people respond in the comments. Tell me I'm a terrible person or whatever it is that you feel. And maybe we can revisit this on a future episode.

Megan and Ben love dogs. So it's only Josh. Yeah. Yeah, it's only me. We're going to take a quick break. And then we're going to talk about the proposed pietta tear tax. in Manhattan. This is central air. So where I live in New York, lawmakers are currently fighting over the state budget. And Zoran Mamdani, our very handsome socialist mayor, has been running on the

idea that there should be more taxes on the rich. She wants higher taxes on corporations, higher taxes on high earners. Kathy Hochel, the moderate governor, has quite consistently said no on this. And then there's also the city council has shot down Mamdani's proposal for a broad-based property tax increase. But there is one task. But there is one task. tax that does appear to have some momentum in Albany, which is a piettaire tax. This is a proposal from the governor, but it's one that the mayor enthusiastically supports. The idea is that if you have an apartment over $5 million in New York City and it's not occupied as a primary residence, there will be an incremental surtax on it. They haven't announced a rate yet. There have been prior proposals with

rates as high as 4 percent on the most expensive apartments, like $50 million plus. But we're probably talking about a percentage point or two here. But so a substantial property tax increase only on homes that are not primary residences. So if you live there and pay income tax, you don't pay it. If you rent it out to a tenant, you don't pay it. If your kid lives there and pays tax there, you don't pay it. But if it's actually just like you're some billionaire, you have your apartment in New York to use for 30 days a year. And otherwise it sits empty. That's going to be subject to a new higher property tax. And I kind of actually like this proposal. In part because I, I think, you know, usually the problem with these new taxes aimed at the rich in New York is that they erode the tax base and they encourage more people to move to Florida and stop paying taxes here.

But I think it's actually unclear how this affects the tax base. It might actually even improve it. And the reason for that is that it's a tax that treats people better if they pay income tax here than if they don't. A luxury apartment that sits vacant is good fiscally for the city because, you know, it sits there. There's a bunch of property tax paid on it and the owner consumes almost no city services. But a luxury apartment that's occupied by a taxpayer is even better fiscally for the city because there's property tax on it and the owner pays the resident pays income tax. They pay sales tax. They may employ people here in New York.

They go out and spend money in the economy, which has positive knock on effects. And so basically making these apartments more attractive to people who are actually going to reside in them and be full fiscal participants in New York City and full economic participants in New York City, I think could actually stand to strengthen our tax base while increasing these collections. I will be really interested. Surely the obvious tax dodge is just to allow someone to claim your apartment as their primary residence when you're not in town and then move out to a hotel that you pay for at much lower than the property tax rate on your PAI tear when you are in town. And you do this with a trusted employee or a family member. They pay, they are low income people who pay. pay, you know, like your niece who is just starting out, is living in your apartment, except technically she won't be there when you want to be in town. This seems like a very easily solvable problem to reduce, for most people, to reduce the tax burden to zero. Wouldn't that also be a beneficial loan?

Because then you're still creating, like, those people who are living in their father's apartment or their, their, you know, boss's vacant apartment for 11 months a year, are then not in another apartment. And so you've opened, you've increased the... Sure. They're not living as someone's roommate. So you have freed up like one in four of those bedrooms. I mean, it's not a zero change. But the problem for the problem for the city of state of New York is that this is not actually a dodge to try to increase the supply of housing in New York.

They actually really need, the city really needs money. So I think... And this is their idea for funding a really substantial budget gap. The way that it's structured about that, and we haven't seen legislative text yet, but the way the proposal has been described is that if a relative of yours lives in the apartment and it's their genuine primary residence, then you're not subject to the tax. Or if it's rented out. Now, they may have a rule that you have to rent it out at a market rent. I think it would probably make sense for them to have a rule that you have to rent it out at a market rent in order to avoid exactly the situation that you have here that you're describing there. So, like, you're not going to, this apartment that, you know, might have a market rent of tens of thousands of dollars a month, there will be a real market for that. And you'll get some, you know, people who are very high income coming to the city temporarily might rent one of these apartments. And that's a valid reason not to be covered by the tax. But if you're just having your butler live in the apartment and pay you some nominal rent, it doesn't have to apply. Some people will be able to have their relatives live in them. But if they're rich enough, the relatives may also have substantial income tax obligations of their own that would then accrue to the city there. And in some cases, some of these buildings, and I think part of

why the tax is politically desirable is you've had these super tall buildings go up in Manhattan. And the apartments in them, a lot of cases, are being used almost like digital Bitcoin, where you have overseas oligarchs who need a way to get their money out of, you know, Russia or China or whatever. And this investment in New York real estate is a place to park it, and the apartment just sits there vacant. So those people do not have, you know, relatives to stash in the apartments. in New York. And more broadly, I think that's just sort of thought of as, you know, sort of an absurd use of our city. These structures that everyone can see from everywhere are being used in large part as a as a financial vehicle and not even being used as real estate. I think it

reasonably offends people a little bit to see these things not even used. I think those supertals, you can hate them, right? But they wouldn't actually work as non-luxury buildings. No, no, of course they should be luxury buildings, but they should be luxury buildings full of rich people who in fact live here. So what is it going to, I'm interested, actually, what's it going to do to the property tax base if you take those people out of the market? I think it's an interesting question. I mean, first of all, it won't take all of them out of the market. Some of them will just eat the tax. Normally, you expect a property tax to capitalize into the price of a piece of real estate. So the property tax goes up, the value goes down.

But here, it's a tax that only some potential owners are liable for. So, It actually creates a wedge and makes the apartment more affordable to a resident than to a non-resident. So you should expect values to come down some, but it could actually make it more attractive for certain people to be residents of New York and pay tax here. Because if you're looking at sort of a holistic cost of living approach, you care about taxes, but you also care about the price of the real estate. And if you have, you know, a much lower carrying cost on this fancy apartment because it's $4 million cheaper, then that lowers the property tax bill compared to what it would have been before. but it also might make it so that you say, hey, it's actually worth it for me to live in New York instead of Florida because the lifestyle that I can get there has gotten less expensive. It's almost like a tax cut. I mean, on the margin, maybe, but it's not like they're getting a property tax rebate out of this. If the property tax collections fall, then the money's going to have to come from someone else. And it's very clear who, Mom Nani thinks it should come from. So I would not necessarily want to invest a lot right now in becoming a high-income New York City resident taxpayer. that just me, not really a problem in my face.

But if I were making that choice, I would definitely not be like, hmm, they've got a $5 billion budget deficit and a socialist mayor. Wow, real estate just got cheaper. I should invest in that. That would not be like my number one place to go. I might be like, you know, going to hang out in Florida for a couple more years. Just see how this goes. It's very hot in Florida in the summer. But also he's a socialist mayor who can't control his own taxes.

Yes, but it is very clear where. Hockel and Mamdani are willing to get the money, and it's not from normal New York taxpayers. It's got to come from somewhere. They've got a $5 billion deficit. They are not only not going to take on the unions. They are in the process of attempting to reverse a pension reform that was designed to make the system more solvent and are now going to undo those reforms. Basically, what they do is later... We'll see. We'll see, but I don't know. Okay, actually tell me, Where is the fixed tier six movement right now, Josh? It's going to end up somewhere in the middle.

I mean, they, you know, for listeners who have not closely followed the New York State employees' retirement system, and I can't blame you if you haven't followed it closely. Like a lot of states, when the fiscal crisis hit in the wake of the great financial crisis, they created a new tier in the retirement system where if you were a newly hired public employee, your pension was less generous. you would hit retirement at the ripe old age of 62 instead of 55. No, it's 63 for full, but the discount, the haircut that you have to take to retire early is larger. Okay, sorry, 63 rather. But so the, as you might expect, over the last 15 or so years, the investments have done pretty well in the pension funds and their funding situation looks a lot less dire than it did circa to 2010. So there's been a lot of political pressure from the unions to unwind these reforms. They've already done a little bit that has made the pension system more generally.

generous, and there's pressure to do that as part of this year's state budget. There's also a lot of fighting over who should pay for that, because when you increase the generosity of the pension, generally it's the employer that pays more. So that's local governments, school districts, and the state. And so there's some resistance from local government officials basically saying, well, this is fine if the state wants to pay for the whole thing. The state doesn't want to pay for the whole thing. There'll be some compromise where they will do some sort of sweetener of the pension system, I'm sure, which is unwise. But I don't think they're going to do the full thing. that costs $1.4 billion a year that the unions are looking for. It's going to be something

that shakes out as part of a multi-dimensional negotiation. The governor's also trying to get insurance reforms because there's apparently a huge problem with people staging fake car accidents because New York State requires Ubers to carry extremely generous liability insurance. And the governor has been interestingly, like rhetorically very eager to take on the trial lawyers, unusual for a Democrat. She seems like genuinely pissed off about this situation. So that's, you know, that's something Hockel wants out of the legislature. There's people in the legislature who want the fixed tier six thing out of her. I expect there'll be some compromises on a number of these things that we'll all shake out in the budget.

And yes, this is an argument against any tax increase in New York. The government already spends way too much money. It's going to find new ways to waste the money. The flip side, in terms of, you know, where could we, you know, what could be done rather than raise taxes more on rich people, our government is so wasteful. And, you know, our Medicaid expense is just so high even compared to other blue states that if they were serious about cutting the budget, they could, you know, they can always find money by cutting the budget to address a fiscal problem. Now, whether they will is another matter. Let's take a quick break and we'll be back with Alex Thompson, National Political Correspondent for Axios, to talk about the White House Correspondents dinner. This is Central Air. So we have a guest with us. Alex Thompson is joining us. He's National Political Correspondent to Axios. He's also the co-author with Jake Tapper of the book Original Sin. in President Biden's decline, its cover-up, and his disastrous decision to run again.

And he's here to talk with us about the White House Correspondents Dinner. Alex, thank you for joining us. Thanks so much for having me. So we asked you here in part because last year you received an award for excellence in coverage at the White House Correspondents Dinner. And you gave a speech related to what's what's in your and Jake's book about the, you know, President Biden's decline and the way that the press was really behind the curve on the coverage of his decline. during the, especially the later part of his term. And you basically got up there and said, you know, that, you know, the press bears some responsibility for when people lose trust in us when we make mistakes like this.

How was that speech received when you gave it? Poorly. At least by people in the room. Hey, I was there and I received it extremely well. Oh, well, thank you. Thank you. But, you know, you know, Dylan Byers and like other sort of press reporters, you know, report at the time, you know, you know, wasn't received that well in the room. I think even like Mark Klibevich, the Atlantic,

took, I don't think I remember distinctly, actually, took a, took a little shot at it. But, you know, that was, I didn't give the speech to be liked. I did it because I thought it, I thought it was true. In fact, I was so nervous. I don't know if it's possible to sweat through a tux. but I got as close as you can get to, like, beforehand. I mean, I think my bosses, I was at, like, the, you know, or my bosses, like, at Axios, I was at, like, the table with the co-founders, the company. And I was just, like, I arrived late. I was completely distracted the entire time because I knew that, like, you know,

I think the White House Correspondent Center, I'm sure we'll get into some of these questions. Like, some parts of it, and on paper are fine. practice are sort of weird and gross. But I think any comedian who's ever done the dinner will tell you that the self-seriousness of the crowd makes it one of the hardest rooms to ever plan. And, you know, I don't think it's, you know, I was not surprised that criticism, you know, even as I was criticizing myself, was not exactly, like, warmly received. It is funny that the, the, it's famously like,

for the comedians always been like in the room it wasn't liked, but then everyone on television did like it because I was telling, you know, the truth to the power. Every time that I've gone to it, it's basically limited to that, to the comedian doing that. All the other speeches are always like, oh, we're the best, aren't we? Everyone here, each

more beautiful reporter than the last. Which is why I think it was so, you know, admirable and important that you went in and did the I'm not here to make friends. Let me tell you the truth. Well, I appreciate that. And yeah, I mean, I remember, like, there's a famous story about Stephen Colbert in his, I think it was 2006.

I'm a nerd, so I've watched a lot of these old comedian speeches. And, you know, he went viral for his sort of, you know, decapitation of W. Bush. But in the room, actually, afterward, remember someone who talked to him right afterward, he was like, like, ghost white. And he thought he was like, I just want to make them laugh. and no one left in the room. And I also agree with you that there's a little self-congratulation of, like, you know, national reporting at times at these dinners that I think is a little, you know, cringe. So I was not in that room, but I actually also heard from someone who was there,

and he said that, yes, Colbert died. But he said the reason Colbert died was interesting if I, is that Bush also had a comedian. Mm-hmm. And he did this routine where the guy, a Bush impersonator is like making fun of him and then he's kind of rolling with it. And it was really funny, apparently, and everyone was laughing. And then Colbert just got up there. And by comparison, it seemed really mean-spirited and not very good. And I actually think that that speaks to something about the dinner.

It's my understanding that it kind of really went off the rails in some way during the Obama administration and part. because it became this, you know, there's Hollywood celebrities flying in for it. And it's becoming something different from what it used to be, which was the industry getting together to like poke a little gentle fun at itself and at the president. And then partly because the polarization of the media, partly because there was that, because it was attracting national attention in a way it had not done before. And therefore what happened at the dinner became like more. important in some way, that it lost that aspect of just being like a nice, a nice industry

dinner. Yeah, the White House Correspondence dinner in the movie Broadcast News is not this, like, scandalous, I mean, like, people dress up for it because it's like their one night to go out and be like, let's have like, let's relax and like, yeah, we, we can like invite like a sort, like some sources. But I agree with you that in practice, and you definitely saw like this sort of vibe shift after the financial crisis, you know, the sort of contrast in like early 2009 of, you know, Obama and like all these people, like, especially, I think like the Obama mania was in full force and you saw a lot of these people. I think that's when the New York Times actually decided they weren't going to buy tables anymore because they felt, you know,

the, at least the imagery or the optics were bad. Even though like, I mean, we sit next the sources at fancy dinners at a regular pace in D.C. it is part of like the job of being a Washington correspondent. But, you know, it wasn't necessarily, I mean, I think your point, it's not like the idea of the dinner is bad. I think it's like nice for reporters to come together and like give some awards to colleagues that like worked hard or like broke a bit, you know, a few big stories and poke some fun. I, you know, invite the president.

And if the president wants to attend, but there definitely seemed to be this. era of at a time of like, I think also the disconnect came is that as the dinner grew in sort of like cultural consciousness, it was also at a time when like voter anger was also increasing. And so you had this like, you know, and I do think during the Obama years, I mean, the dinner ended up being historically significant as well because of, you know, the Trump dinner in 2011 and inviting him at the Washington Post table, remember. And then Barack Obama sort of gets up there and roasts him and Trump is bitter about it. And it's kind of his origin story.

While killing bin Laden. Right, exactly. Yeah. Well, exactly. But people also, I don't think, recognize, like, Donald Trump is doing all of this, you know, race-baiting birther stuff. And the Washington Post still invited him to be part of their table because he was, like, famous and they were like, well, he's a newsmaker, right? And I think it sort of spoke a little bit to

a celebrification that you were talking about, Megan. Well, and then the problem has mutated in the Trump era, which is that, you know, they would traditionally have a comedian every year. And the comedian comes and, of course, roasts the president. And I don't, I don't see why there's a particular reason that the White House Correspondents Association ought to host an annual roast of the president. This has become like a symbol of how we, you know, stand up in a free society. But the press does that by reporting. We have TV shows where people make jokes about the president. That doesn't need to be sponsored by the Press Association.

But then you have this flip side problem where they booked Amber Ruffin last year. And then they canceled her appearing to try to make nice with the president. And then that also causes reputational problems for the Correspondents Association. This year, the mentalist, Ose Perlman, is coming, you know, clearly a strategy to stay away from, you. you know, politically sensitive comedy areas. And Trump will be attending. So we'll, we'll see how that goes. But it just seems to me that the, it places the press in an awkward situation either way, where it's having to, it's having this dinner where it's expected at least implicitly to pass judgment on the president, which it really shouldn't be doing outside the context of its own reporting.

And then there's also related to that self-importance. I think people sort of talk about it like, you know, it's, well, it's important for the press to be able to, to be able. to speak for itself. Like, these people speak every day. This is not a group of people that needs their voices elevated, that needs a, you know, a special event so that their voice can be heard in America. And so it's not clear to me why they go on doing it, because I think it's clearly harmful to the profession to have this. And I assume, I don't know, Alex, tell me if I'm wrong about this, that it's like boring institutional prerogatives, that the Correspondents Association has some sort of actual charitable activities to finance. This thing is a

fundraiser. For people who are directly active in the association, it raises their profile to do institutional activities. But it seems like the White House correspondence association as an actual body has gotten out in a place where it is not being helpful to White House corresponding as a profession. I think there's a lot of inertia, institutional inertia, sort of to your point, that goes on about how the dinner is put on. I don't, sort to our earlier point of like, I don't think the dinner is inherently bad on it's on paper. But I do think for a lot of these reasons, I mean, you could leave like roasting of the president beyond like what you see every day. Like, you know, leave it to Comedy Central on Netflix. I leave roast to that. If anything,

the part that I do sort of enjoy is honestly when like, yeah, at an event where you are, you know, celebrating the press, letting the president to get his time in to sort of like needle, reporters back a little bit, I think, is actually like sort of a sign of confidence, you know, if you let that happen. But I do think that that's not exact, I mean, to your point, like, objectively, that's not what the event has become. Well, the press is not confident right now. It is interesting because, you know, as you guys were talking about it being, as an industry dinner, it's completely fine, you know, every industry gets together and gives themselves little awards, and it's in a networking event. It's fine. And I, and I, and I,

It always reminds me when some of the complaints about this come up, they remind me a little bit of the Oscars, where, you know, the Oscars took on such importance that people who don't like movies and don't like the Oscars will go, why are they expecting us to watch this? And the truth is, you know, they probably shouldn't expect you to watch it. Like, it's just for people in Hollywood to sort of pat themselves on their backs. But when society then gives it this expectation that 50 million people should watch it and everyone should care, then it. then it takes on these other valiances that are much more fraught and harder for people to avoid sort of like the gravities of normal culture war and partisan blah, blah, blah, blah. And that seems to what happened with the White House correspondent's dinner after 2006 in that era of the nerd prom thing, everyone celebrating nerd prom.

It was suddenly this cool thing to go do. I mean, actually, I have no idea. I mean, does the tradition of it being a roast of the president, how far back does that even go? I mean, the only time I know about it is 2006 since then, but was it a tradition in 1992 and 1981? You are getting to the edges of my political nerdum here. But I do, I have watched some of the correspondence centers from the 90s. That was definitely like a thing. And, you know, earlier in my, part of the reason I know this, because earlier in my career,

I was Maureen Dow's assistant at the New York Times. And Clinton famously or infamously made a joke around. It was like around 97, 98, where, you know, he, Bill Clinton had recently had their dog neutered. And he made a, I think the dog was, I don't know, I'll call him Roger or something. And it was like, Roger got what he deserved by Marine Dowd as a fake headline. So I'm aware of some of these from back then. But I don't know if it really, I don't know how deep it went in like the, like the Reagan and H.W. and Jimmy Carter years. According to the White House Correspondents Association, the roast comedian and presidential speech started in 1983.

Okay. It would make sense that it started then, right? you've got a Hollywood president who is pretty good at that format. And the roast had historically been, like, a traditional Hollywood format. They were, like, quite famous. Some of these things are still televised from, like, the 50s and 60s. But I think there was more, it's not like the press wasn't liberal then, but there, and it's not like there weren't plenty of people who were anti-Ragan, but it was less liberal. And the relationship with presidents was friendlier. I mean, I would imagine that the Al Smith dinner one goes much further back.

We're like that that also has this tradition of the comedy. Right, but it's not hosted by the press. Yeah. No, no, yeah, I just mean the tradition. I mean, the roast is a longstanding American dining tradition. I don't know. What's the word I'm looking for there, the adjective? But I mean, there are certain things that just, you know, may have worked in other

circumstances that don't work with the way that Trump has fundamentally changed the relationship between the press and the White House. And this has been very much a two-way street, and it persisted even while he wasn't president. But, you know, there's no way to have, like, a good, healthy, you know, ribbing relationship with Donald Trump. Yes. And then the press has, you know, basically been radicalized by its experience with Donald Trump in a way that has made it impossible for it to hold itself out as an imbiased actor. And so, you know, to your point, Alex, where you talk about, you know, letting the president come needle you can be, you know, a good demonstration of confidence. It's like I think the press for good reason lacks confidence right now.

I don't think the situation, I don't think the relationship. Because people don't trust them. Right. How is it covering this White House? What does that look like these days? I mean, it is so different than in 2017 and 2018. Yeah, there was, yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, press were more in their front, I mean, more in their front foot. at times there were excesses, you know, the White House correspondence, demanding justice and, you know, everything, everything else.

You said his name, not me. And I think, I don't know, I do think some of the institutional, what we're talking about, the institutional inertia of this, like, made it like a thing to, like, try to get Trump to come back to the dinner. And it's like, why, I mean, I, like, I, like, I say I'm by, like, it's nice to have, like, the, you know, the, I think it's sign of comments that the president come and, like, near you. But also, I'm like, who cares if he comes? Like, why, like, this, as you, as you said earlier, Ben, like, like, this is just, like, it's a little self-congratiatory, but, like, it's just an, it's an industry dinner. But, I think the, the, the tradition of the president coming, it felt like there were a lot of White House reporters that really, wanted him to come. And my story reaction was like, why, why, like, I don't know, why do we care so much? Are there any parties surrounding it the year especially excited for this weekend? I'm not coming down to D.C. I did get an invitation to the Grindr Party, which is at some mansion in Georgetown.

Honestly, I feel it's the hottest invite in town. I don't think it was that selective. You should be pretty flattered. I mean, is there, in fact, like residual growth? glamor surrounding this? Is there, or is the party scene around it just awful? Well, let's be clear. The party scene around it has often been awful. Like, so, you know, bear that in mind. But yeah, I mean, the party scene is still very much, like, in full force. I don't understand why party, like, I don't know if people expect that you have that most people own multiple tuxes or just expect you to,

wear the same tucks, like, a few nights in a row. But it's, I don't know, there's, like, a black tie dinner, like, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And I don't know. It's, um, exhaust. You know, like the embassies really, really lean in, um, to try to bring as many reporters and Democrats and Republicans. And it is like, you know, like what people think of as sort of D.C. society being at times,

like a little bit too close to. much overlap. Like, that is still very much, like, in full force over this weekend. I remember in the, I think it was 2017 when I was like on the train down as, like, a Mother Jones editor, go to it. And we, the party that we're going to with me, when we got it and was at where the Apple store is now. And it was like a Benny Johnson through it. And there were, there was. At the historical society. It was in, whatever that Apple, it was like the post. It's in Mount Vernon Square. I know it is, but now it's in It was the old D.C. Historical Society building.

But it had, there was an eagle. And I remember, like, they'd ranked it some eagle. And so people were taking photos with this eagle. And everyone else at Mother Jones, and even people were like, what the hell are you guys doing at this Benny Jones? Like, they were even people who, who, who took another bureaus were a little disgusted at the fact that we were all hanging out to each other at this, like, Benny Johnson IJR party or whatever it was.

I can understand why people who sometimes watch it from afar are like, This is the incestuous thing we don't want to be going on. I mean, honestly, between like that anecdote, Ben, and what you've said, Megan, I think we have, like, the beginnings of, like, a book proposal here of this, like, bizarreo, like, institution that also helped, like, lead Donald Trump to run for president. Yeah. You know. That feels like a way to sell 70 copies. A book about the White House correspondence that are, like, the most inside baseball.

But think about all of the glamour photos. of politicians informal wear, Josh. I mean, I think you're really underselling the opportunities here. Yeah, glamorous. Alex Thompson, national political correspondent for Axios. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. We'll be right back with more Central Air. So finally this week, we have a story that's really up our alley because it's actually about air conditioning. It's sort of this awkward thing. We launched Central Air in October, which is exactly the wrong time of year to launch a show called Central Air, because no one is thinking about their air conditioning then. But now it's, it's, it's, It was in the 80s in New York the other day. I actually have my HVAC service guy coming to update the system and, you know, make sure it's not too dusty or whatever.

We have been running our HVAC. Yes. It's, you know, it's for quite some time now. It is modern life. Is it being 72 degrees all the time? That's what separates us from the cavemen. And it's, you know, every day. It's funny, a few years ago when a journalist who now works at the bulwark, but, but, but.

Ben was not called me and we were talking and I was like, so how is being a journalist for you? And he was like, oh, Jesus, this industry. And he said, Ben, I think what we should do. And I think maybe you should get in out with me is let's go into HVAC repair. I was like, I don't know. And now you have, in fact, gone into Central Air. Yeah. So Clay Fuller, who is the newly minted congressman from Georgia's 14th district, he replaced Marjorie Taylor Green in that recent special election. down there. He posted a video to social media describing how he had to be in a hotel room in

Maryland for work because he's a newly elected congressman. And it was one of these rooms where there's a motion sensor on the thermostat. And he's complaining that it turns the AC off when you're not there to use it. But because it's a motion sensor, it turned off because he was asleep and he was not moving in his sleep. And he woke up and it was super hot. And he goes, he says, you know, it's this AOC Green New Deal thing. And I went down. stairs and explain that you can't do this for us because I'm from Georgia, which is named after George Washington, and, you know, the, Maryland doesn't even have any SEC championships, et cetera. For anyone who's not extremely online, this is a bit associated with an account

on Twitter called Three-Year Letterman, which portrays a Georgia youth football coach with an overdeveloped sense of importance. And one of the things he likes to talk about how, you know, well, France has zero SEC championships. And if you, if you disagree with him, you probably finance your waterbed, et cetera, et cetera. But a lot of people thought that Congressman Fuller was being serious and, you know, really thought that Georgia had been named for George Washington. Here's some of the sound from Congressman Fuller's post. I just want to say to the state of Maryland, I know that y'all are newer to the union and that you don't have a football team. And if Conner Stockton was born here, I play some fake sport like lacrosse. But,

AC has quite literally say billions of lives. Socialism has killed billions of lives. Have either of you ever actually had this experience in a hotel? Because that's not how these systems are supposed to work. The better ones, at least, they have a sensor on the door also. So it knows because the hotel, for a variety of reasons, wants to know if the room is still occupied. They can figure out that you left but didn't check out and they can go clean the room and turn it earlier. But it's supposed to work such that if there's motion in the room and then the motion stops but the door doesn't open, it should know that there's still a person in the room, possibly in the bed. and leave the AC on, whereas if the, if you open the door, close the door, there's no motion, it knows that you've left. I don't recall ever waking up in like a 78-degree hotel room because the HVAC was too dumb to figure out that I was still there. But maybe, I don't know, maybe Congressman Fuller was staying in a bad hotel or had some bedlock or something.

Yeah, I mean, first of all, I don't think it's really a Green New Deal thing. I think it is that they want to save money. Yeah. Yeah. Also, the Green New Deal did not pass. Like AOC is not our president. Right. She doesn't set the rules about HVAC.

I mean, hotels will greenwash stuff they want to do to save money. And the famous example of this is like, would you like to opt for the greener option to not have your room serviced? And in fact, I do want to opt for the greener option to not have my room serviced because I wish to leave my room as messy as I like without worrying that the maid is going to like come in and recoil in horror or that I'm making too much work for them. Wait, that's the best part of hotels. Yeah. I want to clean twice a day. No, no, I'm... I'll take yours.

I'll take the one you don't want. I'm a pretty private person, so I really like having my hotel room not cleaned while I'm there, because I'm a weirdo. Or they'll say, like, you know, we won't laundering your towels unless you drop them on the bathroom floor. And you can take the greener option to not make us do laundry, which I also do, because honestly, I don't care about having my towels laundered every day, because, again, I'm a weirdo. Megan, you're passing up the luxury that is staying in a hotel. that you walk out and you come back and everything is like it's supposed to be. Right. This is, this is, this is like how people live in Europe.

What are you going to sleep in a single bed next to? But I am actually, this does worry me. I don't think this has ever happened to me, but I am an extremely still sleeper. I am someone who can basically get into a shared bed, and I will be in a little narrow line along the edge of the bed, and I will stay in that position all night. And so I can absolutely imagine this happening to me. And it's very distressing that it's even a possibility, even though I assume it was some sort of malfunction and not actually a deliberate choice to leave this poor guy sweltering in the indie.

Sultry Maryland heat. I thought it was interesting because as we were then doing research, Josh, you found that article on a blog about how there's a VIP setting that you can do to hack it. Well, and the congressman also talks about this, that they put it in VIP mode for him, which they should have done already because he's from Georgia where they invented for you. But in that blog post, which you found, if you read to the end of it, it's from a, like, a conservative Jewish blog about the person's trying to describe like, you know, this might just be, this might just be a little lifestyle thing for many people, but for people like me, you know, on I'm not allowed to change the temperature on the Sabbath. So if it turns on and I wake up in the middle of the night and it's 78 degrees, I'm not allowed to go and touch it. So it has to be. And even in the situation that he's describing, this sounds even more absurd because as far as I can understand, if you wake up and move your arms around, wouldn't it by itself trigger it? Trigger like, oh, there's someone here.

Isn't that violating the Sabbath? That would violate the rule against kindling a fire on the Sabbath. Because you are causing. But you're just moving your arms around. The second you wake up, shouldn't it catch it? No, it's like the fridge. So they have to take people who are Sabbath observant, they have to take the light bulb out of the refrigerator for the Sabbath. And I know this because I was a Shabbas Goy for a while for people in my building.

Opening the door, even though you're not deliberately turning a light on, counts as turning a light on if the light bulb is in. Doesn't opening the door cause the compressor to run? Because you let cold air out of the fridge and then it needs to... I do not know. how they judge these two different things separately, but they are judged separately. And I'm basically betting that deliberately turning the air conditioning on counts as kindling a fire on the Sabbath. But what if you, so this person in that situation to do it would wake up at 78 degrees and then say, and I need must not move for that could trigger the motion detector that would solve this problem.

So I will pretend to be in a catatonic state for 20 hours. I'm sure there are several rabbis who have written conflicting opinions. opinions on this. Well, we do love what you're supposed to do in that situation. The Post was interesting because he was like,

I need this for observance reasons, but a lot of you will probably be interested just because you find it annoying that it turns off. Yeah. I mean, it's actually a problem. Like, for a lot of hotels, you can't stay in them if you're Orthodox because the door keys are electronic.

And so you can't leave your room on the Sabbath. Oh. Because you couldn't get back in. Now, there are like workarounds for this, but I'm imagining and I don't know what all of them are like some doors have metal keys

there's other stuff but I assume that if you're a hotel that has made accommodations for modern orthodox people or I guess non-modern orthodox people ultra-Orthodox people also occasionally need hotels

sorry I did not mean to be discriminatory there the ones I happen to know are modern orthodox for kind of obvious reasons I assume that they then just have a thing with the thermostats that they know how to do if it's a hotel that is accommodating

for Sabbath observant Jews. They do that funny thing in hotels in Israel where they'll have an elevator that just doesn't have buttons and it just stops at every floor so that you can go stand in it without participating in the elevator. This is also, there are buildings in New York that do this now. Yeah, you have to turn off for a generative breaking too. Yeah, where the target market is very obviously Orthodox Jews, both because they will of separate fridges and ovens for your dairy and for your meat.

I mean, it's not, it would be illegal to just make a building that only sells to Orthodox Jews. But in practice, the amenities are designed to appeal so strongly to Orthodox Jews that the buildings tend to end up. My understanding is mostly Orthodox Jews. But so do you guys think, if you guys are, you guys are business types, business brains? If you were opening a hotel, would you be like, all right, I want to. want to save some 25% on the energy bills by forcing these Maryland congressmen to sweat in the middle of the night. Well, first of all, he's a congressman from Georgia where they invented freedom. But, no, look, I mean, I think it makes sense that the HVAC adjusts based on whether or not you're in the room.

I think it should work correctly and figure out if you're in the room. But I mean, I have nest thermostat in my apartment and in the house in the pines, and it's like, it genuinely does save energy. And the thing is good at figuring out whether you're there or not. And then you can also control it remotely. So I can, you know, I know I will be home in an hour and it's hot in the house. I can turn it on from farther away. So I actually get better energy control than if I just had a dumb thermostat that I had to physically turn on and off when I leave the house. But I'm in favor of the smart home.

And therefore I'm also in favor of the smart hotel. I appreciated that Congressman Fuller, who's like kind of a meathead, shot this video with a backwards baseball cap on and his rogue workout shirt with his like giant traps. they say that Congress is that Washington's Hollywood for ugly people, but apparently they, you know, sometimes, sometimes attractive people are allowed into Washington, D.C. And actually, that takes us to our last topic this week, which is TMZ now in Washington. And they've been doing these funny interviews on the hill and then also like trolling the existing DC Press Corps by tweeting things like, hey, I discovered this really cool bakery called Tate. Really good, really good breakfast here in Washington, D.C., all the most obvious things. they can find in Washington. But they've been going around interviewing members of Congress on the Hill whose faces they've been learning from their flashcards. And they talk with Congressman Rich McCormick. Literally, the interview is like, you know, like, you're not ugly. You're quite attractive. Like, what is with people saying that this is Hollywood for ugly people? But I don't know, Megan, you're the one who's actually on the ground in D.C. I think it's good to keep the press core

on their toes with TMZ there to join in the existing press scrums. I think it'll be super interesting. Like, I welcome. I welcome any journalist jobs. It's great. Come on in, guys. Make the city more fun. That said, I do have some questions about whether there is a big market for treating politicians. I mean, it's fine with senators and stuff.

But is there really a big market for knowing what backbench congresspeople from, like, Iowa are doing? I guess we'll find out. I guess I would have always thought to the sense that there is such a market for that, the people willing to put money into that are really like not the press but the opposition campaigns. You know, like if you're running in some district in bum fuck wherever, there's probably lots of groups that will be like, yeah, give us a couple hundred thousand dollars. We're going to follow the hell out of your competitor and see if he's going to too nice a restaurant, you know, or maybe he's going to that grinder party after the White House Correspondents Center. So fun fact, TMC is in fact the air of this old class. of paper called The Scandal Sheet.

And the interesting thing about the scandal sheet is they did print a bunch of gossip, but that wasn't actually how they made their money. The way they made, a lot of them made their money was through blackmail, was getting paid to not print the stuff that you'd found. And that business model kind of disappeared for a variety of reasons in the 1950s. But I guess, you know, if this journalism thing doesn't work out, you've always got that option. The funny thing with TMZ is it seems like they have some real synergies here between their existing Hollywood celebrity-based reporting and the Washington stuff where the partial government

shutdown happened and they were getting all of these photos of what members of Congress are up to while they're not funding the government. Most notably, Lindsay Graham at Walt Disney World holding some sort of magic wand enjoying himself. And TMZ is very well sourced, apparently, with this big network of people in public places and airports and hotels and that sort of thing, watching out for celebrities and letting them know who is where. And so I assume that's what happened to Walt Disney World, that someone in the TMZ network alerted them to the presence of Lindsay Graham at the happiest place on Earth. So it does seem like they can leverage some of their existing resources toward coverage that at least, I mean, it's been getting attention. They're owned by Foxcorp,

by the way. So they are part of a, you know, bigger corporate behemoth. But I think it can't hurt. But you know, as you say that, now I'm just so curious about like, what were the mechanics of getting that that Lindsey Graham thing. You know, you can imagine that Mickey or Cinderella or whatever calls up and goes, look, I've been waiting for, I mean, you guys gave me your card 16 years ago, and finally I've got one. We've got someone here. But then did they say, you know, we've actually got a TMZ Stringer.

We're putting them on a plane? Or did they say, go get a photo yourself and we'll buy it from you? You know, like, I don't know, but I'll look and I can, I'll see if there's a photo credit on it. Maybe that'll give us a clue. I think we can leave it there this week. Ben, Megan, thank you as always. Thank you.

Thank you. Central Air is created by me, Josh Barrow, and Sarah Fay. We are a production of very serious media. Jennifer Swaddick mixed this episode. Our theme music is by Joshua Mosher. Thanks for listening and stay cool out there.